You've reached the Creative Space of Antiguan and Barbudan writer Joanne C. Hillhouse. Welcome. For info on my writing, services, and more, scroll down. If you need to contact me directly, email jhohadli (at) gmail.com. Sharing with links and credits is fine but unauthorized use and/or duplication of site content without permission is strictly prohibited. For my other blog, go to wadadlipen.wordpress.com

I’ve seen into the Spiderverse, Blackkklansman, Roma, and The Wife as I continue to make my way through the 2019 Oscar nominees (new post on the Oscars race coming soon no doubt – you know I like to make my predictions).

Lots more to the see-saw but stopping there.

Top Books for January: Possessing the Secret of Joy by Alice Walker – read my review.

Looking forward to reading in February: I want to finish any of the books I’m reading. Beyond that, I don’t really make dates with books; I like to be surprised.

This week I finished Nectar in a Sieve and started the next book in the Glamourist Series.

I also did some housekeeping re the Blogger in Books series, starting the sixth book in the series with Nectar.

My review begins:

“Nectar in a Sieve by Kamala Markandaya – Nectar in a Sieve is a very harrowing novel. Harrowing has a few definitions. It can refer to the tool used to break up and level land, to the process of drawing a harrow over the land to break it up, to becoming broken up by the process, and to disturbing and distressing the mind, soul, and spirit. All seem applicable.”

Read the full review at Blogger on Books Vl, where you’ll also find one of my throwback reviews, Eric Jerome Dickey’s Friends and Lovers.

I’ve also updated Blogger on Books lV and V, so be sure to check those out as well.

Today, I started Without a Summer by Mary Robinette Kowal, my third (fourth if we’re being technical) read in her Glamourist series. And yes, there are several books on my active reading pile, more on my unread books shelf, more on my wish list, plus one I bought this week (a Faye Kellerman…but in my defense, a World War ll era detective novel by one of my favourite mystery-thriller authors, and from the discount shelf) and another I inquired about at the bookstore (a Jonathan Kellerman, my favourite-er mystery-thriller author). Don’t judge me. I need good things right now.

This is my second time participating in the Sunday Post meme , in which we’re supposed to share the past week in book-ish news with others in the book blogging community.

Let’s start with the books and then we’ll get to the ish

I started Closure: Contemporary Black British Short Stories maybe a little bit before this week but it’s been my travelling (i.e. on the road) book this week. I’m enjoying it so far, so much so that’s the only other book of the in-progress pile by my bed that’s managed to drag my attention away (even when I’m not on the road) is The Lizard Cageby Karen Connelly. I’ve been reading The Lizard Cage for a while now but don’t let that fool you; this is a very compelling read. I don’t want to say too much because I’m almost done and my review is coming soon(ish), but let’s just say that I slammed it down and glared at it today, then went on my facebook page and cursed it out. Like I said, compelling.

I’ve been posting flashback pages of my book launches, from first The Boy from Willow Bend (a coming of age novella) to most recent With Grace(a Caribbean fairytale and picture book). I’m not done but hope you’ll check out what I’ve done so far.

Last time I participated in the meme, I mentioned that I was starting The Known World– well, I’ve since posted my review.

Now for the ish

Blog stuff

There are some book mentions – Book of Night Women, Sugar Barrons, Mary Prince, To Shoot Hard Labour and my own Musical Youth– in the latest post on the blog, the only really new post here of the past week.

Between a book editing project (the hustle), processing entries to the Wadadli Pen Challenge (a lit arts development project I run), and life life-ing, it’s been a week of ups and downs, as weeks tend to be. A highlight was my meet-up with our Wadadli Pen project intern because I stay being impressed with this young lady. But since this is a book-ish post, I’ll mention books received by the project this week -well, I can’t mention them all but let’s just say the stash includes several Mary Poppins, Paddington, and other kid-friendly books for the 12 and youngers while the adult stash includes two writing books I’ve sworn by On Writing by Stephen King (which is in my top two books on writing that I’ve read) and 3 A M Epiphany by Brian Kitely (in which you’ll find lots of prompts to jump start your writing) among other craft books including one This Year You Write Your Novel by Mosely, and some good looking reads like Fire Child by S. K. Treymane, The Things I should have told you by Carmel Harrington, and The Woman Who Upped and Left by Fiona Gibson, among others (have you read any of those?). See list of patrons here (though I do need to update it).

Around the blogosphere

I posted, on my other blog, about the finalists for two significant Caribbean book prizes, Bocas (I’m rooting for Kei Miller’s Augustown based on my love for his previous writing and the fact that this one is already on my to-read list) and the Burt Award (by the way I listed all the Burt titles – gift ideas for the teen/young adult in your life); also the Anisfield Wolf Book Awards, if any one wants to check out any of the books on those lists.

As far as my own writing goes, The Other Daughter was posted in Adda some time after my first Sunday meme participation and this past week Little Prissy Palmer was published in The Machinery, if you’re in the mood to read short fiction.

So that’s life in book-ish news this past week or so; the week ahead is yet unwritten. Tonight I hate-watch (because it’s been that kind of season) the Walking Dead.

I’m making this my post for the Sunday Post Weekly meme. Only my second time participating. So what’s new? Mangoes started coming in and mango season is always a happy season, whatever else is going on in the world (or, more specifically, my world). And I finished Edward P. Jones’ The Known World. I finished it right around the time I got to see Jordan Peele’s Get Out, a life syncing up moment if ever there was one. I recommend both the book and the film, both are in their way entertaining and compelling, dealing in different times and coming from different angles, but both centering race (both, without preaching, making us uncomfortable in interesting ways; uncomfortable’s not a bad thing if it gets us thinking on things and moves the needle). I might do a separate post on the movie but I’ve already posted on the book. It’s the latest addition to my Blogger on Books series – follow the link –> Blogger on Books IV

The meme I’m trying this week is Bibliophile by the Sea’s First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros meme. Mostly because it’s Tuesday and why not?So here goes. I’ll share three.

1. The book from my ‘reading’ pile that I’m most actively reading: Edward P. Jones’ The Known World. Not the whole first chapter or first paragraph though because I don’t have that kind of typing time…just enough to give you a taste:

“The evening his master died he worked again well after he ended the day for the other adults, his own wife among them, and sent them back with hunger and tiredness to their cabins. The young ones, his son among them, had been sent out of the fields an hour or so before the adults to prepare the late supper and, if there was time enough, to play in the few minutes of sun that were left. When he, Moses, finally freed himself of the ancient and brittle harness that connected him to the oldest mule his master owned, all that was left of the sun was a five-inch long memory of orange laid out in still waves across the horizon between the two mountains on the left and one on the right. He had been in the fields all of fifteen hours. He paused before leaving the fields as the evening quiet wrapped itself around him.”

“My daddy is Prime Minister. I was born in the back room of a whore house on Popeshead Street. I lived there with my mother.”

3. My most recently published book – children’s picture book and fairytale With Grace:

“It is a dry land, sun-blessed. But plants need rain to grow. No rain deity has split the clouds and allowed rain on this land in far too long. It is as if their magic has left this place. In such a place, rich, fertile soil is as valuable as gold and as elusive as faerie-magic.”

You can read a little more of With Grace here, where you’ll also find link to the first pages of all my books.

First time here? Here’s my bio – but, long story short, I do this writing thing because I love it…and not just ’cause no one will pay me to read.